


Rest for the Weary

by tollofthebells



Series: Ellinor Trevelyan [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Caretaking, F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 03:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20753252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tollofthebells/pseuds/tollofthebells
Summary: Ellinor convinces Cullen to get some much-needed rest.





	Rest for the Weary

It’s been an _hour _since they’d returned from the library after having supper. She hadn’t even wanted to stop there—_I only need a couple more books on the Wardens_, he’d promised, but she knew it would be longer than that, and she’d been tired. They both had. A long day full of meetings and training and even a sparring session in the afternoon—how they made time for it, she still isn’t sure—had her yawning against a bookshelf nearly as soon as they’d arrived in the tower, Cullen disappearing among the stacks of history texts with a promise of _I’ll only be a minute_.

She hadn’t had to wait for him—in fact, doing so only looked suspicious. There are whispers among his soldiers of their relationship already. None among her inner circle, _thankfully_, with the exception of their very closest friends who already know, and they _like _the privacy, they do, and yet whenever she’s home it’s one following the other around, savoring every moment together and they tell themselves they’re careful but they seldom are, and following him, waiting for him in the library had only proven so once again.

But at least being there had kept him from losing track of the time, losing himself in tomes and old maps and strategy notes as he so often does when she’s away. He’d gotten caught up in conversation with Dorian but she was able to usher him out without much of a fight—_we’re off to bed, anyway_ she’d told their friend to Cullen’s excuses, but once she’d taken him by the hand and pulled him down the stairs, he had little argument left in him.

_It’s late_, she’d warned when they’d first made it back to his office. The truth is that she’d had work to do too—letters to answer, reports to read and sign off on. Countless tasks she’d yet to finish since arriving home from Crestwood two days earlier. But he’d looked tired. Pale. Ill.

_Again._

And even off of her dais and throne, even in the humble confines of his bedroom, she must lead by example.

“Cullen,” she calls down from the upper floor, a third time—a _final_ time—before abandoning the little opening in his floorboards and crawling into bed.   
  
He’s answered her past summons with little more than empty promises, mumbled excuses. Thirty minutes earlier, _almost finished, love_, but she’d heard his quill scratching notes with rapid insistence, faraway determination. Fifteen minutes earlier, _yes, Lin, I’m coming_, but he’d made no move to rise from his desk, no attempts to finish up for the night. But this time—the third time—he concedes. Finally. She can hear him moving about in his office below, crossing the floor with heavy footsteps, stacking his papers, blowing out candles before _finally _the rungs of the ladder creak and she knows he’s coming up to bed at last.

He concedes, but only partially. When he climbs into bed next to her it’s with a book in hand, a charcoal pencil behind his ear.

“No,” she says firmly, “_no._ You need sleep. Put it away or—”

He pulls the book away from her. “It’s important.”

She crosses her arms. “It’s not.”

“It’s plans for _your_ troop movements,” he insists, frowning, “and _your _trade routes, and _your _safety, so yes, it is.”

She only shakes her head at him, sits up halfway, pulls the pencil from behind his ear, from out of his curly hair and sets it on the table next to her. Without it, and without the foreboding armor he’d long since abandoned sometime before dinner, he seems smaller. In the dim starlight and by the single dwindling candle she’s lit on his barrel-turned-bedside-table, she can see the bags under his eyes, the creases on his forehead and the frown lines along his cheeks from too much work and not enough rest.

“Look at you,” she murmurs, eyes searching up and down his face, pale from what she can only pray isn’t the onset of another withdrawal wave, and his eyes, reddened and surrounded by dark sunken circles. “You’re exhausted. You _cannot _keep—”

“Lin—”

“Don’t _Lin _me,” she says, not angry but firm, concerned. He clenches his jaw. “Lie down.”

“I—”

“Lie down. Please. Even if it’s only for a little while. You need a break.”

She offers silent thanks to the Maker when he gives in, _finally_; he’s as stubborn as a mule and even she can’t always sway him, but he does as she asks this time—rests the ledger on the floor next to him, _just for a minute_, he mutters, rubs his eyes, adjusts his pillow, and sinks into her embrace.

“Isn’t that better?” she murmurs when he lets his head rest on her shoulder and presses a soft kiss into her neck.

“Mm.”

She smiles, massaging her fingers over the tense muscles in his shoulders before running them slowly, repeatedly through his curly hair. She’s rewarded with a slow sigh against her next, warm breath soft, unhurried and sending goosebumps over her skin, and she knows she’s got him.

“If you keep doing that,” he mumbles, words already thick with the Fereldan accent his exhaustion so often emphasizes as she continues to play with his curls, “then I’m going to fall asleep.”

“You underestimate my strategizing, Commander,” she teases softly, the humor in her voice halfhearted, weak. “That’s exactly my plan.”

He hums softly, perhaps a tired attempt at a laugh, but he doesn’t argue again. A few minutes later, when his breathing evens out and his mouth opens slightly in sleep, and for once the troubled look on his face has been replaced instead with _peace_, she knows she’s succeeded.

**Author's Note:**

> another little bit that was meant to be part of the longfic and never really fit in!


End file.
